Trump’s Washington

How President Trump is changing government, the country and politics.

Good evening. Tonight, my colleague Theodore Schleifer, who covers campaign finance and the world of billionaires, looks at the great disparity in fund-raising between the two parties. And we’re checking in with Gov. Andy Beshear, Democrat of Kentucky, about disaster management in the age of Trump. First, the headlines. — Jess Bidgood

The great money gap

	By Theodore Schleifer

There are many signs that the Democratic and Republican Parties are in different places. Here’s one: The main Republican presidential super PAC controls almost $200 million. The main Democratic presidential super PAC is still repaying millions of dollars it accepted from someone who is now a convicted felon.

Such is the state of big-dollar political fund-raising, as last night’s filings with the Federal Election Commission made clear. When it comes to attracting mega-donors, Republicans are crushing Democrats. That could mean a lot more ads for conservatives than for liberals in next year’s midterm elections.

MAGA Inc., President Trump’s super PAC, collected about $177 million in the first half of 2025, in large part from cryptocurrency interests eager to curry favor with Trump.

The corresponding group for Democrats, Future Forward, had a slightly different tie to crypto: It spent the last six months disbursing $3.4 million to what is known as the FTX Recovery Trust, repaying money it had accepted during the 2022 election cycle from crypto-exchange executives like Sam Bankman-Fried. (Last year, Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of stealing billions of dollars from his customers.)

Future Forward’s cash on hand as of June 30? $2,826.08.

At the same time, the Republican National Committee sits on over five times as much money as the Democratic National Committee does.

The disparity doesn’t end there. Republicans are also doing better down ballot. The main House G.O.P. group, the Congressional Leadership Fund, has a $10.5 million cash advantage over the corresponding Democratic group. The main Senate G.O.P. group, the Senate Leadership Fund, has a $16 million advantage over that of Senate Democrats — and that doesn’t include the Democratic group’s staggering $21 million in debt it retains from last fall. (These figures do not include fund-raising from allied nonprofits.)

It’s early in the 2026 midterm elections cycle, of course, and super PACs can close gaps quickly if a particular meeting in, say, a wealthy California enclave like Holmby Hills goes well. Liberal ideological mega-donors will surely engage if the midterm elections become a referendum on Trump, as they may well do.

The F.E.C. filings suggested that corporate concerns, including those crypto companies, have an interest in supporting both parties’ super PACs.

But the truth is that corporate interests simply have more to gain these days from backing Republicans than they do from backing Democrats.

As the Trump administration went about transforming the federal government, MAGA Inc.’s donations included $25 million combined from the energy executive Kelcy Warren and his company, Energy Transfer, which is benefiting from Trump’s energy-friendly approach.

Likewise, Jeffrey Yass, an investor in TikTok, gave $16 million as the social media app remained in the middle of sensitive negotiations with Trump. And all that crypto dough bought industry executives lots of face time with the president who is steering crypto policy.

Future Forward cannot offer any of that. Being out of power is costly.

Q&A

A red-state Democrat talks Trump and disaster relief

Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky is a red-state Democrat determined to keep his name in the conversation for 2028. But he also has a state to lead, which means working with a president who has often tangled with Democratic leaders when catastrophe strikes.

My colleague Billy Witz, who covers national news, caught up briefly with Beshear, who as governor has navigated more than a dozen natural disasters, including flash floods in April that killed seven people and tornadoes in May that killed 17.

Q: I was in London, Ky., after the tornadoes, where several people told me their internet, phone and cable service went out — including one guy who had spent 25 years in the Air Force tracking weather. What more can be done proactively, like the warning systems that could have been in place before the deadly flash flooding this summer in Texas?

A: Every one of these, we ask every single question — not to try to place blame, but because, if we can learn something, we may save an extra life the next time. That’s why I hope FEMA will be upfront and answer the questions about Texas, if nothing else, so that they can do better next time. We’ve had a dozen teams that are already out in the field ready to put their boats in the water when it starts flooding. That’s helped us save hundreds of more lives this year. We built storm shelters in places that they weren’t. We have pushed out weather radios.

Q: What’s your level of confidence that there’s going to be a thorough accounting of what happened in Texas?

A: I certainly hope there is going to be one. I hope that there’s not a political pushback to some questions that I think we’ve seen at least some defensive responses to. My only complaint that I’ve had with FEMA itself has been how long it took for us to get public assistance. But I’m really grateful we’ve gotten it. Otherwise, their performance has been really good. And this is coming from a guy who criticizes this administration on a lot.

Q: What has been the key to getting assistance? So much of federal funding in the last six months has been with strings attached.

A: I don’t think that’s happened in Kentucky.

Q: Why not?

A: I made a direct push to the president through a letter, and our congressional delegation pushed really hard. The way we respond to natural disasters is a great nonpartisan story. If you look back at getting the individual assistance, the president called Representatives James Comer and Andy Barr first, and that’s fine because they worked really hard to get it.

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BY THE NUMBERS

154,000

That’s how many federal employees the government is paying not to work, according to the Trump administration.

The figure represents the number of employees who, as of June, had resigned or retired early with the promise of being paid through Sept. 30 or Dec. 31. It is the first comprehensive disclosure from the government concerning the scale of President Trump’s effort to downsize the federal work force.

The number doesn’t include the thousands of people who were laid off or fired as a result of those efforts.

THE MOMENT

The new faces of government

If, for whatever reason, you spent the past decade asleep, this picture might confound you.

Eric Lee, a contributing photographer to The New York Times, took this photo at the White House on Wednesday, when President Trump held an event about health care technology. It underscores just how deeply Trump has transformed the government.

As the event was wrapping up, Eric noticed that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former Democrat, and Mehmet Oz, the former TV personality known as Dr. Oz who now runs Medicaid and Medicare, were posing for a selfie. Joining them were one of Kennedy’s sons and Amy Gleason, the acting administrator of the Elon Musk-created Department of Government Efficiency.

To Eric, the moment appeared to show the officials’ delight at their seemingly improbable paths into Trump’s government.

“There is an excitement from Dr. Oz and R.F.K. to be on this stage and be looked up to,” Eric told me. There were dozens of photographers in the room, he said, but Oz “took the time to pause everyone and pose with that background of the East Room.”